Strength and Conditioning VS. Halo and Doritos: Which is more dangerous?

While information regarding the benefits of resistance training and plyo-metrics are accessible to us as fitness professionals, it is not readily accepted and available to the public. It is our job as health ambassadors to educate the public. When it comes to educating the public, one has to learn to “talk-public.” What this means is that we can’t just go out there and throw statistics, anatomy, biomechanics, and physiology darts, we have to explain it to the parents in a manner that benefits their child. Common sense is always a good approach in my mind.

While our kids are in world today where obesity is the norm, what message are they receiving every single day. Obesity is ok? Eating Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew while playing four hours of Halo is ok? How can anyone in their right mind contest that resistance training and plyo-metrics are unsafe? Sure, one in fifteen may incur an injury as a result of participating, but how many kids will develop life debilitating diseases and habits as a result of their current extra-curricular activities? A study published in Dynamic Medicine has found that sedentary kids, compared to their active counterparts, are five times more likely to develop a metabolic syndrome in their teenage years. For kids with “low aerobic fitness,” the risk is six times as high. If the last sentence isn’t reason enough to open the eyes of the parent, we need to look at a different set of problems (Inactive Kids More Likely to Face Heart Disease, Jul/Aug 2008).

I guess my point is this. Children are developed and taught by their parents and teachers. I think the best route to a more active young population is through the parents and teachers. Not only should we be educating parents, but getting them involved as well because chances are they are at risk individuals. If the parents and teachers are involved, the child will observe that behavior and be more likely to adopt it as well. To prove this point, 2/3 of the American adult population are either overweight or obese, and it’s began to spread to the kids. 30 percent of kids are overweight or obese in 30 states; to be blunt, parents and teachers need to be more responsible and not have the “ostrich with its head in the sand” approach (Kunes, 2009).